Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom release date, cast, trailers and news

The park is gone, but life finds a way, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the new sequel starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and a returning Jeff Goldblum. Here's everything you need to know about Jurassic World 2.

The park is gone, but life finds a way, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

When Jurassic World arrived back in 2015, it brought with it a new park, new dinosaurs, and a new star - in the form of Chris Pratt, fresh from wowing us all in the first Guardians of the Galaxy.

It also brought with it more than a billion dollars in box office receipts, rapidly becoming the third biggest film of all time - though it’s since been overtaken by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and will probably soon slip to fifth as Avengers: Infinity War carries on making the big bucks.

Naturally, in Hollywood that means sequels, so it wasn’t long before Jurassic World 2 - later given the subtitle Fallen Kingdom - was announced. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back, along with a few new faces and one very important old one, as they have to go - would you believe it - back to the bloody park. Again.

Release date

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is coming out this summer, but there’s a surprisingly big gap between the UK and US release dates.

If you’re in Britain, you’ll get to watch the film from 6 June 2018, which is also when it opens in most of Europe and the rest of the world.

That release date is conveniently timed to get the film out just ahead of the start of the FIFA World Cup, which is less of a concern in the States - not least because the country’s team isn’t even in the tournament - so US dino fans will have to wait until 22 June before they get to watch.

The really keen may want to go back and re-watch the original three Jurassic Park films too - luckily enough, there’s a box set for that.

It’s also worth remembering that there’s a new videogame coming out to tie in with the Fallen Kingdom release too. Jurassic World: Evolution is a theme park simulator that lets you build your very own dinosaur park, and hopefully keep it intact for just a little bit longer than they’ve managed in the films so far.

Cast and crew

To absolutely no-one’s surprise, Chris Pratt is back as Owen Grady, joined by Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing as the two returning leads from Jurassic World.

They’re not the only returning faces though. None other than Jeff Goldblum is back, after roles in the first two Jurassic Park movies, as the inimitable Ian Malcolm, most famous for spotting that life, uh... finds a way. We don’t know how big Goldblum’s role is, but he’s in the film, and that’s good enough for us.

Elsewhere the likes of James Cromwell, Toby Jones, and Rafe Spall join the cast, along with the brilliantly named Justice Smith - best known for Netflix series The Get Down. Series staple BD Wong is also back as scientist Henry Wu, but there’s no sign of either of the two kids from Jurassic World, you may be pleased to hear.

Things have also slightly changed behind the camera. Original director Colin Trevorrow is gone, but still contributed the film’s script, along with Derek Connolly (who had a hand in the first film’s screenplay too).

Trevorrow’s directorial replacement is J.A. Bayona, whose big break was Spanish-language horror The Orphanage. He’s since gone on to more effects-heavy movies like tsunami drama The Impossible and the brilliant coming-of-age/giant-tree-monster movie A Monster Calls.

Posters and photos

So far there have been three official posters for Jurassic World 2, which you can see below. One oddity worth noting is the taglines: the US posters tend to adopt the rather dark ‘The Park Is Gone’, while UK variants of the same posters opt for the cheerier ‘Life Finds A Way’.

There’s also a decent selection of official images from the film, mostly made up of scenes that have featured in the trailers so far, showing off a few of the main characters (Goldblum!) and a couple of the new films big beasties. Click through the gallery below to check them out:

Trailers

There have also been three full trailers for the film. The first came back in December 2017, and focuses on the initial thrust of the film’s plot: a mission to return to the island to save the dinosaurs from a volcano eruption. What could go wrong?

Then came trailer two, which teases what comes after the rescue op: new genetic hybrids, a dinosaur auction, and a particularly nasty new creation stalking suburbia:

Then there’s the final trailer, which takes everything in trailer and amps it up to, oh, 13 or so? It gets pretty nuts:

Story and plot rumours

If you’ve made it through those three trailers, then you probably know about as much as we do about what to expect from Fallen Kingdom.

Set four years after the first Jurassic World, it sees Owen (Pratt) and Clair (Dallas Howard) recruited for a mission to return to Isla Nublar to rescue samples of eleven dinosaur species after the presumed-dormant volcano on the island turns out to be, well, not so dormant.

It’s pretty clear that isn’t all that’s going on though - Owen is brought in specifically to rescue Blue, the raptor he trained in the first film, and from the looks of the trailers he’ll be used to create a brand-new genetic hybrid dino, which is in turn sold at auction to (presumably) nefarious sorts. Toby Jones looks to be the auctioneer, while Rafe Spall is apparently the big bad behind it all.

This is a Jurassic Park film, so naturally it all goes a bit pear-shaped. The big dino gets loose, and somehow finds itself in a child’s bedroom - all very reminiscent of the T-rex on the run at the end of The Lost World, the original Jurassic Park sequel way back when.

Speaking of, Jeff Goldblum’s role is still a little bit unknown. The trailers only show his Ian Malcolm in some sort of hearing - apparently to determine whether or not to rescue the dinos from the volcano in the first place - but we’re holding out hope there’s more Goldblum in the film than that, and that the script works him back into the action later on.